Cheney Does Africa

Philip Giraldi

The "Global War on Terrorism," or GWOT
for short, has become such a staple of political discourse that it has been
embraced both by Republicans and Democrats as well as the media. Republicans
cite Iraq as the "central front" in the GWOT to justify continuation
of the war in that unhappy land while Democrats point to Iraq as a distraction
from the GWOT, which presumably is taking place elsewhere. Both views are echoed
by an uncritical media eager to tell a good story and willing to pay any price
to do so.

Both the Republican and Democratic spins are, unfortunately, factually challenged.
Al-Qaeda Between-the-Two-Rivers in Iraq does not threaten to take over the country,
is only a small part of the resistance, and would quickly become completely
marginal if the U.S. forces were gone. It has exactly zero capability to transfer
its activity to American soil. That there is a GWOT elsewhere that is starved
of resources by Iraq is also a myth, as the U.S. government effort against terrorism
is, if anything, overly muscular, with armored brigades being poorly employed
to cope with a threat that should be dealt with through better use of intelligence,
diplomacy, and law-enforcement capabilities. Because of the convenient shorthand
provided by expressions like GWOT, the Republicans, Democrats, and media all
lump terrorist groups together, not distinguishing between those like al-Qaeda
that genuinely threaten the United States and groups like Hamas, the Chechens,
and Hezbollah that do not.

The blinders firmly fixed in place on the politicians and the media are not
just another neocon mind game, however, and have genuine consequences in terms
of the billions of dollars and thousands of young lives that are being wasted.
The profound misreading of reality virtually guarantees a continuing tragedy
for the United States and its citizens, still more for the countless foreigners
who have been on the receiving end of American military power. Terrorism is
serious business, after all, and the failure to learn from mistakes made has
unfortunately become a hallmark of the White House and its policies. The most
recent failure has been in Africa, which is rapidly becoming an epicenter for
terrorism that actually threatens both Europe and the U.S.

Africa, more particularly North and East Africa, is home to many of the Salafist
terrorist groups, a name that derives from Salafism,
an approach to Islam that supports a purer, simplified form of worship that
looks back to the origins of the religion. The Salafist movement that subscribes
to "jihad" grew out of the armed resistance to the Algerian military
government's clampdown on religious parties in 1992. The Salafist jihadists
believe that there is an obligation to engage in perpetual struggle against
corrupt Muslim governments as well as against Western political dominance and
the West's values. Salafists believe that government and Islam are essentially
identical and that the former should be run under strict Shariah or religious
law. Al-Qaeda is philosophically Salafist, as are Jemaah al-Islamiah in Southeast
Asia, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, and many of the Muslim Brotherhood supporters
in Egypt, but the center of the movement in terms of numbers and impact is in
North Africa.

The Salafist movement is particularly dangerous to Europe, as millions of North
Africans reside in France, Belgium, Spain, and Holland. Many Arabs living in
Europe have been radicalized by a number of factors. The perpetrators of the
Madrid train bombings in 2004 were Salafists. The Salafist threat to the United
States is also real, as many of the Europeans with roots in North Africa hold
European Union passports that enable them to travel with relative freedom to
the U.S.

The United States has responded to the terrorist threat in Africa with the
Pentagon's recent creation of an Africa Command distinct from existing regional
commands in Europe, the Pacific, and Central Command, which have hitherto divided
Africa among them. Africa Command, currently operated out of Stuttgart, Germany,
is expected to be fully up and running by 2008. The Bush administration also
beefed up CIA stations in Africa, but the lead in the counter-terrorism activity
has been given to the military by the White House because the Pentagon can act
without the "findings" that the intelligence agencies require. This
means that Congress is out of the loop. Defense Intelligence Agency offices
are now in place in many embassies in Africa, while military teams, frequently
operating under aliases as civilians, have been sent to a number of countries.
The marching orders of the covert teams do not require them to coordinate with
the CIA stations and the U.S. ambassadors. In fact, under orders from Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, such liaison has been considered unnecessary and
even discouraged.

The proliferation of clandestine teams reporting only to the Pentagon's Joint
Special Operations Center (JSOC) immediately led to problems. Soldiers, unfortunately,
look and act like soldiers. There were a number of incidents involving the covert
units, made up primarily of Delta Force soldiers and Special Forces. In one
instance, last year, the U.S. ambassador in Kenya had to personally intervene
to get a group out of jail and onto a flight home. This and other embarrassments
in South America, most notably in Paraguay, led to a recent decision by Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates that requires any Pentagon operational unit to coordinate
with local ambassadors and the CIA chiefs of station. Uniformed Special Forces
teams are also reported to be operating in Kenya, Algeria, and Mauritania. Djibouti,
with French assistance, has become the center for technical support for the
entire African effort and is home base to a fleet of drones that monitor developments
in areas that would otherwise be inaccessible.

In spite of the intensified effort in Africa, the results have been bad, nearly
as bad as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vice President Dick Cheney was behind the
decision to oust the Islamic Courts Union movement from Somalia in December
2006. The genuinely popular Islamic Courts, admittedly Islamists of a fundamentalist
type, had brought order to much of Somalia for the first time in 15 years. They
had repressed the warlords in many parts of the country, set up religious courts
to try criminals, reopened the country's airport and seaport in Mogadishu, and
suppressed piracy along the coast. Their leader, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, rejected
U.S. claims that his movement was linked to al-Qaeda and was sheltering Fazul
Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged planner of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.

European diplomats present in Mogadishu as well as UN representatives believed
that the Islamic Courts Union represented the best option for a stable and peaceful
Somalia. Dick Cheney, true to form, disagreed. He insisted that the U.S. would
not deal with anyone linked to terrorists, in spite of the numerous signals
being sent by the leadership of the Courts indicating willingness to negotiate
an accommodation with the U.S. and Somalia's African neighbors. The White House
instead chose to covertly fund the Ethiopian army for an invasion of Somalia
in support of the weak and generally unpopular provisional government that remained
isolated in the town of Baidoa while the Islamists took control of much of the
remainder of the country. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military operation
was successful while the aftermath was not. The Ethiopians are now withdrawing,
and Mogadishu has reached a tipping point in instability, experiencing a wave
of warlord generated violence that virtually guarantees chaos for the foreseeable
future. It also increases the likelihood that Somalia will again become a "failed
state," allowing genuine extremists with a jihadist agenda to take advantage
of the instability and assume control.

Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and even Libya are also experiencing a resurgence
of terrorism. Osama bin Laden has frequently cited Africa as the future of his
movement, and that moment has perhaps already arrived. Five months ago al-Qaeda
deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the incorporation of the North African groups
in Libya, Morocco, and Algeria into the central al-Qaeda organization. A recently
issued State Department Worldwide Warning about terrorist activity resulted
from intelligence raising particular concerns over an expanded Salafist campaign
in North Africa, to include Libya. At most risk will be economic targets, an
al-Qaeda specialty. While the Algerian al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic
Maghreb (formerly the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or GSPC) has
been targeting foreign oil workers for some time, there is new evidence that
Libyan jihadist groups, previously quiescent, are now also ready to launch attacks
against the Sahara region's gas and oil production.

Recent developments indicate that cooperation and guidance from al-Qaeda have
already created a more potent and effective terrorist force in North Africa
and that the Maghreb has now become the focus of efforts to pursue global jihad.
In late December 2006 there was a series of running gun battles in generally
peaceful Tunis, resulting in 14 deaths and the discovery of plans by Islamic
militants to attack the U.S., British, and Italian embassies. The militants
organizing the attacks reportedly came from Algeria, and the Tunisian authorities
also arrested 18 Tunisians who traveled to Algeria for terrorist training, taking
advantage of the relatively borderless Sahara region to move from west to east
all the way across the continent and even into the Middle East.

Last week's suicide bombings carried out in Algiers, which almost killed Prime
Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, were the first major attacks in the Algerian capital
in more than seven years. They were also the first suicide bombings in Algeria,
and responsibility for them has been claimed by al-Qaeda. There has also been
a recent surge overall in successful terrorist attacks countrywide, though most
have taken place in remote regions. The Algerian terrorists, who came close
to toppling the military government in the early 1990s, have rejuvenated themselves
after a series of reverses over the past five years and are now capable of staging
more devastating attacks. There are concerns that new bombings, now employing
the difficult-to-prevent suicide technique, will again focus on urban centers,
leading to an enormous increase in both casualties and the resulting political
instability.

And there are also signs that the terrorists are working more effectively together.
The deaths of four would-be suicide bombers in a Casablanca safe house during
a police raid the day preceding the Algiers bombings thwarted an apparent joint
operation in which the Moroccan cell would have carried out their own attacks
in support of the Algerian cell. Four days later, two more suicide-bombing attacks
in Casablanca targeted the American Cultural Center and the U.S. consulate.
The coordination of activity reveals that even though terrorist groups now recruit,
train, and finance themselves locally to avoid detection, they still plan and
communicate across national borders.

And so the story of Bush administration ineptitude in its self-proclaimed war
against terrorism continues as Africa heats up. The ideologically driven GWOT
is a war that always prefers the exercise of a military option and ends up creating
more terrorists and terrorism-supporters than it eliminates. Afghanistan and
Iraq pose little in the way of a terrorist threat outside their own borders,
but they dissolve into chaos while a new, genuine threat grows stronger in Africa.